While California Fires Rage, the Rich Hire Private Firefighters

Don Holter is an owner of Mt. Adams Wildfire, a private contractor in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Sacramento. Most of his business comes from contracts with federal agencies, but his company is one of only five private firms in California that he knows of that work directly for homeowners.

Most don’t advertise the service widely, he said, instead relying on word of mouth. “It’s not who you are, it’s who you know,” Mr. Holter said.

Mt. Adams Wildfire offers short-term “on call” wildfire protection for families and neighborhood associations in Northern California and Eastern Washington. Last year, the company was on call for close to 90 days, Mr. Holter said. The service can cost up to $3,000 a day.

The majority of private fire crews work for insurance companies like Chubb, USAA and Safeco, which often provide fire mitigation services to their policyholders in high-risk fire areas without extra charge.

But most insurance-contracted crews don’t actually fight the flames. They focus on making homes more fireproof by installing sprinkler systems, fire breaks and fire-blocking gels.

Firefighters with Mt. Adams Wildfire will battle wildfires threatening homes, Mr. Holter said, on the phone from a job in South Lake Tahoe.

“It’s coming,” he said. “It’s a good old boys’ system, but it’s going to change.”

Private firefighting isn’t new. In the United States, government agencies including the National Forest Service have contracted with private crews to fight and prevent wildfires since at least the 1980s.

What has changed is that contractors are beginning to hire out their services to homeowners directly, as well. It follows that some security firms see a new business opportunity.

Chris Dunn is the founder of Covered 6, a private security firm outside Los Angeles that contracts with homeowners in nearby Malibu and Hidden Hills. He said he is planning to cross-train his security guards to fight fires and hopes to offer a subscription-based fire protection service by next summer.

In addition to training his own staff, Mr. Dunn wants to create a federally accredited firefighting course for independent contractors, who could be on call when homes are at greatest risk.

“It would be like a temporary worker during Christmastime,” Mr. Dunn said. “Retail has them, why wouldn’t fire season have them?”

Disregarding Evacuation Orders

Ever-increasing wildfires are costing Californians hundreds of billions of dollars. Taxes in the state are already high, and insurance rates for homeowners in high-risk fire areas have soared.

On top of that, utility customers will soon be on the hook for over $10 billion in extra charges to help companies cover wildfire damages.

One of those companies, Pacific Gas & Electric, already charges some of the highest electricity rates in the country. The company has been harshly criticized for pre-emptive blackouts this month that have left millions without power for days.

It is also currently in bankruptcy proceedings to address liabilities resulting from recent fires started, in part, by its aging equipment, including the inferno that engulfed the town of Paradise, killing 85 people last year.

Residents in the wealthy enclave of Hidden Hills, who already pay for Mr. Dunn’s security company, plan to spend even more to protect their gated community. The city has earmarked $5 million to bury hundreds of feet of overhead power lines and plans to eventually move all electricity cables underground.

Last year’s devastating Woolsey Fire, one of the largest on record in Los Angeles County, was a big factor. The nearly 2,000 residents of Hidden Hills, where celebrities such as Drake, Jessica Simpson, Howie Mandel and members of the Kardashian family have homes, had to evacuate during the blaze on Nov. 8.

“We didn’t have any fire trucks left,” said Lilian Darling Holt, a resident of 40 years and a member of the Hidden Hills community emergency response team. “We basically had to fend for ourselves.”

Armed with pool pumps and fire hoses, residents and Covered 6 security guards held the fire at bay long enough for Cal Fire air tankers to arrive that evening and drop pink fire retardant around the edge of the city.

Though the Woolsey Fire ultimately burned more than 96,000 acres across Los Angeles County and Ventura County, in the end, only one structure in Hidden Hills, a barn, was lost.

The story was picked up differently in the media, however, after TMZ reported that Kim Kardashian West and Kanye West had hired private firefighters to save their mansion.

“They saved our home and saved our neighborhood,” Ms. Kardashian West said on the show. “I had them make sure they controlled every house on the edge. So it wasn’t just my home that I said take care of. I said, ‘Take care of everything.’”

But according to interviews with Hidden Hills residents and city officials, the reality was more complicated. When flames threatened, such a firefighting team was nowhere to be found.

It wasn’t until at least a day later that a crew arrived at the Kardashian-West home and began spraying its own retardant, said Mr. Dunn of Covered 6. “I know because I logged them in the gate,” he added.

Steve Freedland, who was the Hidden Hills mayor at the time and now is a member of the City Council, said: “The story about Kim and Kanye sending private fighters to save Hidden Hills — that was completely untrue. That really played no part.” (Representatives for Ms. Kardashian West declined to comment for this article.)

Mr. Freedland, who served in an emergency command center at Hidden Hills City Hall as the fire raged, said that about 30 residents and city security guards ignored mandatory evacuation orders and stayed behind to protect the homes in the fire’s path.

“Those are the people that I’d like to see get credit,” Mr. Freedland said. “Not some fictional fire crew.”

Too Many Fires to Fight Them All

Private fire teams that show up to protect homes sometimes neglect to coordinate with emergency agencies and can hinder evacuation efforts, according to The Los Angeles Times.

“From the standpoint of first responders, they are not viewed as assets to be deployed,” Carroll Wills, the communications director for the California Professional Firefighters, a labor union, told the newspaper. “They’re viewed as a responsibility.”

Many in California, most notably the writer Mike Davis, the author of “City of Quartz,” and the essay “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn,” have questioned the logic of protecting homes in extremely fire-prone regions in the first place.

Mr. Davis and others have argued that, at least when it is public agencies fighting the fires, it is an unfair use of resources and that as wildfire season in California worsens, the state should reconsider the amount of new housing that can be built in high-risk areas. (In recent years, some homeowners in fire-prone regions have begun to be dropped by their insurers.)

A new report by Los Angeles County found that emergency services were seriously unprepared to respond to last year’s Woolsey Fire, and that in a fire that size, residents cannot always expect public agencies to protect them.

When the blaze broke out, many fire crews in the state were already busy fighting the Camp Fire in Northern California and another fire in Ventura County. (Some in Malibu also reported that firefighters failed to arrive during the blaze.)

With that memory still fresh, Hidden Hills residents considered hiring a private firefighting service.

Instead, they bought their own fire engine. The pickup-size truck, which comes equipped with a water tank and hoses, is designed to fight blazes in rural areas. Local volunteers are training to use the vehicle to put out brush fires and hot spots.

“I want to make sure the next time people stay behind, we’re better equipped and not putting anyone’s safety at risk,” Mr. Freedland said. “Having a truck that has water and a pumper on board is a game changer.”